I’ll be honest for a second (that sounds like then I’ll go back to lying!)…I’m a little confused by all this recession hype in the media lately.
First of all, I’m not sure that we are actually in a recession. By definition, a recession is two consecutive quarters (6 straight months) of a shrinking economy, not just an economy that has slowed down. Think of it this way. Remember when you were growing up and you hit that growth cycle where you grew 8 inches in one year? But then the next year kind of tapered off and you only grew 2 inches. Does that mean that you were shrinking the second year or simply that you hadn’t grown as much as the year before?
The economy is the same way. It has been growing so much that when we are at a time like now where it is not growing as much as it was, then people become convinced that we are shrinking.
I guess the second side of my confusion over the recession hype is that if we are in a recession, I wouldn’t even know it. It’s not because we are rich or have stock piles of bottled water and canned beans in case of a crisis. But rather we pay close attention to our money so that when crisis hits, we barely even notice it. When you live on a budget and you have an emergency fund for rainy times such as now, then a crisis in the economy doesn’t really affect you.
Tomorrow, I’m going to show you what my wife and I have done that has made us virtually recession proof…
